


Somewhere a Clock is Ticking

by badass_normal



Category: Lost
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-29
Updated: 2010-07-29
Packaged: 2017-10-15 12:49:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/160970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badass_normal/pseuds/badass_normal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are no golf courses or happily-ever-afters on this side of the Island. Days four and five with the tail section survivors.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Somewhere a Clock is Ticking

**Author's Note:**

  * For [macey](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=macey).



“You think this is it for us?”

Goodwin turns his head and summons some earnestness to his eyes as the surf washes up over his bare feet and the horizon gulps down the sun into the ocean, drawing red and orange in the sky, blood and fire, and maybe a little apocalyptic violet underneath.

“No.”

Nathan snorts dark and angry. No change there. Or hope for any. “You’re on the optimist’s side of this shitshow? Too bad.” He kicks a wave like he has a purpose. “I’m guessing you know something we don’t?”

That’s a recklessly astute question, and Goodwin doesn’t smile. Almost. Sometimes he thinks Nathan’s the smartest guy in the metaphorical room, because being an asshole is not necessarily being stupid. But under Jacob’s law it does guarantee being fucked over, and Nathan is headed for the cold anticlimax to an empty bitch of a life. When he arrives, well. That won’t be Goodwin’s call or fault.

Because, see, Goodwin’s will is the way of his life. He lives like an animal, an animal with a chain wrapped around his throat. A dog, probably. A german shepherd. But it’s a long chain and he’s never cared who’s knotted it. And he will never be blamed because this master, this entity on the other end of the leash. This master is the one in charge.

Making peace with that is the best decision he’s ever made. He’s the same as all his people, and he can’t believe that the world away from the Island would be any different.

“Ask me more things,” he says, much too late for the question. “I can make something up.” But he won’t, can’t, make Nathan believe it. That’s the thing, that’s just it. The death sentence.

“Seriously, I’m pretty fucking sure you’re all crazy.” Nathan tells him. He removes his shirt, begins stomping into the ocean, deeper. Splashing water over the dirt on his bare chest. “What’re the odds? Twenty-three, twenty people survive a plane crash and I’m the sole representative of sane.”

“Sanity is relative. My wife is a therapist.” He doesn’t even want to stop himself. He says it because he’s almost forgotten, actually. Three days and he’s as stranded as these people around him.

 _You’re all going to lose your minds_. It won’t be pretty and he doesn’t relish it.

He’s never seen a car crash, but he hears you can’t look away.

He follows Nathan into the ocean, clothing and all.

\--

The downpour begins without warning, without preamble, as it has consistently. Appropriately. It soaks his curled hair and drips off his nose and does not wash anything away. His pants stick to his legs. Heavy.

He grips the prayer stick. The Lifeline. Wonders how he remembers Bible verses when he is sure his memory ought to be clouded with only a looping, dry hell, hands and clothing drenched in blood and reeking of guilt.

One of the children, the boy, is crying. Eko cannot comfort him. He must re-learn compassion and empathy like he is an infant and he will do so by observing.

( _His sister shouts at him. He cries harder._ )

But perhaps there is nothing to observe. Perhaps no one knows these things.

Eko has experienced the lowest common denominator of human being. Has lived through it. Learned so, so much. He does not wish he could live his life over, change it all. He does not wish. The most valuable thing he learned to avoid. Wishing is easy and instinctive, and Eko gave up on instincts the moment he rose from the jungle floor with the bloodstained rock in his hand.

And if, if he happens to suffer.

God can punish him for the rest of his life. At this point, he would welcome someone else to do it for him.

\--

“I think there are other survivors out there.”

“Wouldn’t that be great?”

Bernard hands her an unidentifiable piece of fruit, offers her a smile. It’s nice to see. “The others don’t believe it, but if _we_ survived, who’s to say no one else did?”

Libby digs her thumbnails into the skin of the fruit, and sighs peacefully at the sweet smell. Fifty feet away there are four corpses, and she’s enjoying the smell of fruit. She wonders if this is coping or crazy. A very familiar dichotomy in her adult life.

“How would we ever find each other?” Libby asks him. “The plane split open, and who knows how big this island is?” She imagines multiple gatherings of starving survivors, foraging for food and staying far away from the danger in the jungle. She imagines that this can’t be the worst.

Libby read _Lord of the Flies_ in middle school. There’s a lot she didn’t get. But she did finish it, and she knows that they don’t get rescued until they’ve already lost their marbles. And that Ana Lucia has been talking about hunting pigs.

“Or if it’s even an island,” Bernard is continuing somewhere outside of Libby’s head. “We could be on a—a peninsula or something.”

“It feels like an island,” Libby replies without really knowing why.

He looks like he wants to say something, like he isn’t accustomed to keeping things in. And she likes that. She likes that he wants to talk to her. Because she would be an _excellent_ psychologist.

“Are you okay?”

Bernard sniffles a little. “My wife was on the plane, and she’s not here.”

“I’m sorry,” she tells him because there is nothing else to say, nothing except grey walls and a used bathrobe and connect four and white noise and bad hygiene and people crazier than her.

She’s buried him. Them. Donald.

David.

In another life, she thinks, she’ll know exactly how to deal with grief.

\--

There’s part of Ana Lucia that believes this could be like a do-over. It’s a very self-aware part, however, and her cynicism hates herself for the naivety. Because every fucking time she looks at those kids, the tattered remains of her uterus blast a wave of unwanted self-pity through her skeleton and she imagines she’s literally evaporated from the land of people faking like they’re alive.

Bottom line. There’s no way her old life is going away, even though Goodwin insists that it doesn’t matter who she was, like he’s trying to redeem her and she wonders. She wonders about him a lot.

That’s probably what it is. She doesn’t wonder about anything or anyone else. Not even Tall Dark and Silent, who should be the real mystery among them. The fact that he can kill two people with his bare hands and a rock actually comforts her, and she feels very well protected by his presence, but no, she doesn’t wonder about his life.

Libby does, Libby wants him to talk. Ana Lucia imagines a nice bold list in Libby’s brain, faxed from the DSM-IV, telling her everything that’s wrong with everyone except herself.

If Libby were a real psychologist, she’d know something that Ana Lucia doesn’t. Researchers have done studies. Throw a man and a woman on a treacherous, frightening bridge and have them interact, and they get physically aroused, impending death a powerful turn-on.

The deathwatch ticks and people get horny. Makes some reproductive sense.

If Ana Lucia ever got the chance to read about those studies, she’d lie run deny rejoice at the excuse. That would be it, nothing more than last-ditch genetic desperation because she can’t, she fucking can’t care. She’s too dead, like dead has degrees.

She’ll lie. This is not a flaw.

It’s their fifth day on the Island and this is already the third time she’s screwing Goodwin. Because he’s the only thing that makes sense anymore. Him and sex.

They don’t really have to get dressed afterward, because they fuck with most of their clothing on. She pulls her hair back into its tie and he adjusts his pants and looks at her.

Goosebumps ghost up her arms, even in the sultry humidity of the jungle.

“What?”

He doesn’t answer for a moment. Then he offers up that smile he has, the comforting, nice-guy smile. “I’m just glad I have you out here.”

She nods.

\--

She hates kids. And she’s scared of them. Maybe there’s a difference, probably not.

Her first babysitting job, she was twelve and she let the boy climb the tree as high as he wanted because she was going to be the coolest babysitter in the neighborhood, the one all the children begged for, and in order to do that she had to let them break the rules.

He fell. Cracked. A week later she heard that he was still in a coma. To this day she doesn’t know what happened to him. She certainly never babysat again.

Every time her biological clock acts up, Cindy closes her eyes and sees the blood pooling like red molasses from under the boy’s head, the limpness of his arms, the purple under his skin. It’s a more than adequate technique for turning her off to the idea of ever having children.

“Do you have a home?”

Emma is blocking her view of the ocean, hands on her hips and the final syllable elongated in that way she has.

“I beg your pardon?”

“You work on an airplane. So do you just fly all the time?” Emma plops down into the sand beside her, and Cindy doesn’t have a clue how to deal with it. “Are you a nomad?” She says it like she’s only just learned the word.

A nomad. Interesting. She’s been in one place for five days and she’s already feeling landlocked. That would probably answer the girl’s question. “I have a house,” she says evasively, hoping it’s good enough for a however-the-hell-old Emma is.

Unfortunately, it isn’t. “When do you go there?”

“Not often.”

“How many places have you been to?”

That trips Cindy up a little. “What do you define as a place?”

Shrug. “Anywhere that’s important.”

She looks at Emma, point-blank. The innocent anticipation in her blue eyes. Cindy wonders if she knows how impossible her questions are.

“Depends.”

Emma blinks, twice, then rolls her eyes. “You can just say if you don’t wanna talk to me, you know.”

Cindy places a tentative hand on Emma’s shoulder, not sure why she’s putting herself through this. “Grown-ups have a hard time with honesty.”

“Well duh. But what if you didn’t?” She gestures vaguely. “Here?”

And a chill crawls up Cindy’s spine in the baking noonday sun.

No, she doesn’t have a home. Hasn’t for a very long time.

 _Here_.

\--

Goodwin is humming as he stands in the sand and watches the sun set again. Nathan recognizes the song.

“What the fuck is that?”

“Hmm?”

“Petula Clark? Really?”

The other man grins sheepishly. “Sorry. It’s my girlfriend’s favorite song.”

Nathan almost manages to not scowl. “Thought you were married. To a therapist.”

He watches something strange pass over Goodwin’s face, strange and ominous like a fingerprint of impending death, before the sheepish grin returns. “Nobody’s perfect.”

 _I’m sure you know that._

The sun disappears into the ocean. Sinks. Nathan shivers suddenly in the dark breeze. Hopes it doesn’t rain tonight.


End file.
